Greater Baltimore Health Alliance Physicians LLC received approval Monday for a federal program that will give them greater Medicare benefits for reducing costs and improving quality of care for Medicare patients.

The organization, a branch of GBMC HealthCare, was one of four health care provider groups in Maryland approved as Accountable Care Organizations through the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ Shared Savings Program. The Greater Baltimore Health Alliance includes 300 doctors and Greater Baltimore Medical Center in Towson.

“We’ve essentially been building a system of care. This now is a validation of our system,” said John Chessare, CEO of GBMC HealthCare, which is also the parent company of the Towson hospital.

Chessare said he sees the Health Alliance’s designation as an ACO as an opportunity for GBMC to be more than a hospital.

“We’ve been building to make the company a system of care with a great hospital and not a hospital company,” Chessare said in an interview.

Accountable Care Organizations are groups of doctors, hospitals and other providers who agree to work together to coordinate care for Medicare patients. The goal is to reduce health care costs through better coordination among the various doctors a patient sees. Groups that are successful in providing quality care and lowering costs will receive additional Medicare benefits.

ACOs are overseen by Medicare through one of several programs, including the Medicare Shared Savings Program intended to help Medicare fee-for-service providers transition to the ACO model. The four Maryland ACOs announced Monday are all part of that program. Groups will report their patient outcomes to Medicare and if the cost of care for those patients comes in below the anticipated cost, the ACO will receive a portion of the savings. The program uses 33 performance measures for patient safety, preventive health services, care for at-risk populations, care coordination and patient experience.

MedChi, the Maryland State Medical Society, worked with Health Prime International, a health care management and information technology company, to set up those three ACOs. The physicians in those groups will be developing health care programs over the next few months, according to MedChi.

Gene Ransom, CEO of MedChi, said he and the physicians involved in the groups believe the new model will allow for better care of patients, while reducing risk for doctors.

Maryland’s new ACOs were among 89 new participants to the shared savings program, for a total of 154 groups in the program. The groups announced Monday are expected to serve a total of 1.2 million people in 40 states and Washington, D.C.